I shoot with a 20D and primarily use a canon 70-200 4.0L series lens and a 24-70 2.8 sigma lens.

I love the proofs and the images seem great on the computer...but when I order my enlargements, say 8x12 they are awful. Most of the time they are unsharp and often quite grainy.

Now, I do shoot at high ISO's in low light, so I understand the graininess but the sharpness really disappoints me. Should I be sharpening every image in PS before printing? Is this really necessary, or am I doing something wrong?

Is there a way of batch sharpening?

Thanks everyone in advance for your opinions.

Jen

Hey Jen -

Yes, there's a way to batch sharpen.....but first a little more info would be great: do you shoot in RAW or Jpeg? What is your normal post processing? Do you sharpen at all after you get the pictures out of the camera?

I personally use PS to batch sharpen all of my pictures.....just started doing it and I love it. I bought Kevin Kubota's magic sharp action and it's working great. It's a part of his Production Tools set.

Also, see if you can shoot at a lower ISO. I think it would be hard to shoot f4 consisitently, so how much are you using the Sigma? Have you done any tests to ensure that the Sigma is focusing properly?

There are so many things that could be the issue here and I feel for you because I recently went through all of the same confusion. My advice is to test everything - from the ISO setting to the f-stop, to the post-processing, to each lens. This will help you figure out where your problem lies, and unfortunately there's no way we can tell you for sure - you'll have to do the dirty work yourself.

All the best!

It's possible that the Sigma lens is letting you down. A good controlled test would be to shoot the same image from a tripod with your Sigma and then a sharp prime, like a 50mm, borrowed from someone who is having no trouble with 8x12 enlargements.

You may find that your particular sample of the Sigma 24-70 is troubled glass.

Are you shrinking your image to 8x12 or letting the printer/lab do that on its side? That may affect the image as well...



From what I've heard the Kevin Kubota Magic-Sharp Action is pretty good for this. I've seen others refer to it, though I'm just a lowly assistant. I rarely fool with with the Photoshop in that regard...

Good luck!

hey jen, are you shooting raw?

i have a bunch of images that we shot last year - a wedding that was very pretty, but candle light in december and very VERY dark. now she wants her album and when i pulled the images, i really had to work them.

HERE'S WHAT I DID:

one thing is that at high iso, images seem softer to me, anyway. so i just kind of go with it.
i lowered the contrast and the curve in raw so that the image was very flat.
if you move the sliders for exposure and shadows while holding the ALT key (pc), watch where you start to blow out the highlights and where you lose shadows. then adjust with the brightness. this seems to separate the highlights an shadows without creating more noise. (just how it looked to me)
go into the color bablance tab and lower the blue intensity (which is where the noise hides). i take it to about 1/2, but i don't chagne the hue.
go back and adjust your brightness (if you need to)
finally, go back to the contrast and increase it until you get some 'pop', but not mud. i think mine was around 45%.
once i opened it in photoshop i ran a very gentle unsharp mask, and they are acceptable.

it sounds like a lot, but once you do one, save it as a preset and then you can just 'tweak' the ones you need to.

if you are soft, this will help. if they are out of focus, it may help, but don't over sharpen, or they get worse.

Hi hon:

I shoot in RAW but convert to jpg before photoshopping.
I usually correct lighting and colour in RAW then tweak in PS.
I don't normally sharpen images unless I notice in PS that they are blurry or soft.

Do you fine the magic sharp different that using the unsharp mask in PS?
Is it a script that you use to batch sharpen? Do you find it ever oversharpens by batching sharpening them?

I use the sigma...way more than the canon, only because I find most rooms too small for the canon. I do often shoot at wide open apertures again due to low lighting.

I've not tested the sigma for focusing but they seem sharp on the screen and when I'm only doing 4x6 proofs...that's the frustrating part because I don't even realize they are soft until I've already ordered the enlargements.



Hi Damon:

I don't know if it's the lens. I think when I'm using it for group shots (at 24mm) it's likely the lens. The rest of the time, I think the lens is likely ok, though I really do want the 24-70mm canon L series. If it wasn't so darn expensive!

I'm not shrinking my images at all. I do let the lab do that. Do you think it might have something to do with the lab? The images looks perfect at 4x6!





Wow.....
I had no idea that by reducing the blue tone you could reduce some of the noise! That's great. I'll have to keep that in mind when I'm editing.

I really appreciate the feedback Belissima.

A few things here. If you shoot in RAW you want to do your photoshopping in RAW. Editing a 16 bit file allows you the ability to do a lot more to your image before you start destroying it. Look at your histogram pallet when you are editing. When you edit an 8 bit file (a jpeg) you end up with a lot of "combing" or gaps in the histogram. That's bad.

All images shot with a digital camera need some sharpening. This is because of how the chip interpolates color. Smart Sharpen, Unsharp maks, or any commericial sharpening actions are just different ways to fix the color interpolation issues. There is nothing that will fix a lack of sharpness due to optics (aka, out of focus images.) RAW captures need more sharpening in photoshop than jpeg captures because jpegs usually receive some sharpening in camera.

I hope this helps.

-Beau

You also may be seeing introduced compression artifacts by working in JPEG. The problem will multiply exponentially each time you resave, and recompress, a JPEG file.

If you are shooting RAW use your RAW converter to do some sharpening, white balance and any needed exposure adjustmets. At this point I batch convert my files to TIFF files. Any fine tweeking is done in Photoshop on the TIFF files and they are resaved as TIFFs. I do not convert to JPEG until I am ready to upload to the lab.

Is TIFF a better way to do PS?
For some reason my PS doesn't open RAW files for me.

I'll chime in with a different opinion -- I shoot in RAW, then use C1Pro (just started testing out Lightroom) to do as much color/exposure/contrast/etc. correction as possible... then I export to JPG, run any noise reduction on the images that need it, and take care of any extra tweaks/effects that I'm looking for.

Why do I do it that way? For one thing, TIFFs are huge files, and when I'm editing 500 photos it takes up a LOT of HD space (not to mention takes longer to open in PS). I do see the combing in the histogram but it hasn't really affected my print quality, either for proofs or for albums.

Just my 2 cents. And yes, image sharpening is a must... for prints I usually use unsharp mask at 130/0.5/1.

Can use the unsharp mask in photoshop, as a batch processing at the end, or must I open each photo individually?

PS won't open RAW files. You need to open them in Bridge then convert to JPEG before you go into PS.

TIFF's are HUGE files as Ryan pointed out and unless you have a lot of hard drive space and a smoking fast computer, they will really slow you down.

How do you rund the noise reduction...do you use the "reduce noise" filter in PS?




Good to know....thank you.

Yes. You just have to make an action to do it but that is really easy.

-Beau

The 20D does not focus well in low light or low contrast situations. (And "low" doesn't mean dim - it means an overcast day.)

I have two Sigma lenses which do not focus consistently on either of my 10Ds or my 20D.

Because of the above, I always chimp at max magnification to check focus.

If you have to use unsharp mask to make an image look acceptable, it was soft to start with.

To see how a shot will look when printed as an 8x10, view it at 50% magnification.

Except for web posting, I almost never sharpen my images - only if they are going to be 8x10 or larger and then only selective sharpening. If you do sharpen you have to sharpen at the size it will be printed at - and take into account any sharpening that the printer may do automatically.

One of the best programs for doing quick post processing, including autocolor, sharpening, and noise reduction, is Bibble Pro.

Oh...right. I can do that!!




Thank you.

since you are shooting at high iso's maybe it's the noise that's giving you the problems. I've been shooting with a canon xt (my 5d comes tommorow,yeah!) so I've had lots of troubles with noise.

I use a noise reduction plug in to reduce the noise before I sharpen. I find that many times when I sharpen an image with high noise that it looks even worse after it's sharpened. This is the PS plug in I use.

http://www.imagenomic.com/nwpg.aspx

If anyone uses something different, plz share, I'd like to hear.

I have the 20D with the 70-200 2.8L and a sigma 18-50 2.8ex and I too run into the same proplem. it usually happens in low light conditions as well but low light isn't just dim light it happens with overcast days as well. I need to look into this and see if it is the sigma lens or the camera. I will have to let you know what the outcome is.

Thank you .....I will download this!




Can't wait to hear.
Please update.

TIFF or PSD files are much better to save files. There is no compression introduced in the saving process. If you are a Canon shooter Digital Photo Professional, DPP, will open RAW files and allow you to sharpen, white balance, adjust exposure and much more. You can then batch all your files to TIFF for further manipulation in PS or you can batch to JPEG for uploading to your lab.

Lightroom, Aperture and Capture One can also be used.



You can create an action to batch process in PS too but I find that all my files do not require the same amount of unsharp masking.

good point!

And it is sooo easy...could you tell us how to make an action or suggest a book, tutorial???

Thanks

This is not the best way to sharpen, but it is the easiest.

Quick and dirty USM Action (using CS2)
1. In the actions pallet, click create new action, give it a name and click record
2. Go to Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask
3. Use these settings (for starters) Amount: 125%, Radius: 1, Threshold: 0 and click OK
4. Click "stop recording" in the actions pallet

This is a start, but there is so much more to sharpening an image. As others have said, sharpening should be the very last thing you do to an image, and the amount of sharpening an image needs is dependent on the final output size that the image will be.

Oh goodness... TIFF files? People use those things? No no no we're not doing 3d design and applying textures! We're using Photoshop! PNG's are smaller and still lossless so be sure to bump the compression ratio on them way up (just means it takes a bit longer and makes the file a bit smaller). I did a quick unscientific test of a random image i found. I took the raw (from a Nikon D50) and outputted to png, jpeg(highest quality) and a TIFF. The TIFF was 17mb the jpg was 3.4mb and the PNG was 8.5mb. For me that's a very reasonable size for an image that's losslessly compressed.

True but at least at this point, TIFF is the more widely accepted file type. If you stay strictly in PS it will not be a problem. If you use different programs, TIFF is more universally accepted. TIFF works for me but it is not the only way.

Most programs accept png's... what programs are you thinking of that don't accept them?

Also try Hard Light and Soft Light, those can have a nice effect too!

That's the same principal as my old Fuji Imagon lens on my 4x5 view camera.
The lens has an adjustable metal screen on the front of the lens that has lots of openings in it. The more you open the holes the softer the image is. Basically the screen overlays an out of focus image on top of a sharp image. Funny how this technique has been translated to digital. It's sort of in reverse though.